I love words. They inspire me to go past the surface to explore origin and meaning.
For the meaning we give things changes everything.
Meaning also changes due to external forces like society, culture, and evolution.
Meaning makes all the difference to what and how we create in life.
Promise vs. Challenge
When I first created The 100 Day Promise, I had a clear intention, and I knew what I wanted to deliver.
I was initially inspired by the idea of a 100 day challenge, but something about it didn’t feel quite right.
So I turned to my dictionary, where I found that the origin of the word challenge was not as inspiring as I thought.
chal·lenge
: a call or summons to engage in any contest, as of skill, strength; from Latin, to accuse falsely, rebuke
As an Aries, I love a good challenge, but I also resist feeling dominated. The older meaning of the word challenge was what I’d understood energetically, and why I resisted the word.
Then I read the origin of the word promise.
prom·ise
: from Medieval Latin, literally, to send forth into the future; a declaration made about some act to be done or not done
“to send forth into the future” – this phrase sent a shiver of positive energy up my spine, and I wondered what it would be like to give myself 100 days to send a promise into the future.
Not as a commitment to act every single day, but as an intention to create the future.
That intrigued me, and formed the basis of The 100 Day Promise.
Why 100 Days
Mother Teresa said, “Life is a promise. Fulfill it.”
Break that down into manageable bits, and you have a life made up of many promises.
Each promise is a seed planted in your consciousness, that with the right amount of time and nourishment, comes to fruition.
Each promise deepens your relationship to your word and your capacity to create change.
“Reality making is reciprocal. You make it, while it makes you.” – Deepak Chopra
In the world of personal development, we’re too often inundated by challenges and blueprints; 21 day programs that promise to [fill in the blank__________].
Sometimes they fail because these programs don’t live up to the hype.
Sometimes though, they fail because we move on, failing to implement what we’ve learned.
Is that a failure of commitment or a failure of inspiration?
I looked for an answer, and a possible solution. I wanted a new way of being that could empower our intentions in the world. Continue reading
